esther.

Isaiah 61:1-2, 8-9

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor,
he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;

to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn;

For I the LORD love justice;
I hate robbery and wrong;
I will faithfully give them their recompense,
and I will make an everlasting covenant with them

Their offspring shall be known among the nations,
and their descendants in teh midst of the peoples;
all who see them shall acknowledge them,
that they are an offspring the Lord has blessed.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMwVXlWfK4M&w=227&h=170]

zombies.

So you may or may not be interested to know that I had a dream closely resembling I Am Legend last night. I've decided that I have the weirdest dreams, and they have gotten so ornate when it comes to plot and content that I need to start writing them down. This one was only slightly spooky.

So basically, it was winter out...one of those nights when the snow was blowing in sheets across the street, and somehow, in the back of my mind, I knew that everyone in the city was turning into a zombie (sometimes you just know). I was with Paul, and we were hurriedly driving to my house to get some of my belongings before even my family turned. It was pretty black out...only the snow and streetlights where white. Very monochromatic. Anyway, we arrived, and I remember dumping the contents of my bathroom drawer into my bag and haphazardly grabbing clothes out of my room - I didn't have much time. I saw my mom on the way out and knew just by looking at her that it was almost too late.

We then drove as fast as we could out of town far out into the country (as that would be the safest, clearly.) We stopped at a wooden, shanty-like bed and breakfast? to sleep, and something seemed fishy there too. There were green cornfields all around, and it was dusky outside, quite pretty - but inside, the building had exposed pipes, boring walls, and beige carpet. I had my own room and was about to get ready for bed when a couple random people wandered in all friendly-like. They seemed normal, but I knew they weren't (insert dramatic music here). I ran into the bathroom and dialed Paul's phone to call for help. He answered right away and said he was coming.

And then I woke up. because there were tornado sirens outside, on a Thursday, at 10am, in perfectly sunny & blue sky weather.

Huh.

washington. oregon. northern cali.

Can I just express some of my excitement over the West Coast road trip that is occurring next summer? This means camping, northern beaches, the woods, mountains, and Seattle all at once. I am beside myself.

Books.

I love having time to read. And this summer I have done just that. Here's my list: 1. When People Are Big and God is Small - finished 2. Alice I Have Been - currently reading 3. The Sacred Romance - currently reading  4. Practical Theology for Women  5. These Strange Ashes 6. Half Broke Horses

Would love further recommendations if you have some...

make war.

I hear so many Christians murmuring, murmuring about their imperfections, and their failures, and their addiction, and their shortcomings. And I see so little war! Murmur, murmur, murmur...Why am I this way? Make war! 

Until you believe that life is war - that the stakes are your soul - you will probably just play at Christianity with no bloodearnestness and no vigilance and no passion and no wartime mindset. If that is where you are this morning, your position is very precarious. The enemy has lulled you into sleep or into a peacetime mentality, as if nothing serious is at stake. And God, in his mercy, has you here this morning, and had this sermon appointed to wake you up, and put you on a wartime footing.
- John Piper

The only possible attitude toward out-of-control desire is a declaration of all-out war. There is something about war that sharpens the senses. You hear a twig snap or the rustling of leaves and you are in attack mode. Someone coughs and you are ready to pull the trigger. Even after days of little or no sleep, war keeps us vigilant. - Ed Welch

Stop making peace with ears and eyes and tongues and hands and feet that betray you like Judas.

on the topic of bugs.

Anyone who has ever had a worst fear can relate to this post. I had a little issue last night, but this actually goes back a bit farther than sixteen hours ago. I need to preface the point with an explanation. This is probably the grossest story you'll ever hear. Ready?

When I was fifteen, there was one evening I was in bed, lights off, talking on the phone with a friend. I really don't know how it happened, but the worst possible thing occurred: a live spider crawled into my mouth while I was awake and talking. I kid you not, I threw the phone across the room, starting spewing and spitting and yelling (somehow all together), and practically fell out of bed. I couldn't find it on me or the floor, so I glanced around hurridly, ignoring my friend's questions and exclamations from the dropped phone, and searched for the bug. Nothing materialized. Needless to say, I didn't get back into bed for a good hour and practically tore my room apart until I found the thing. And then Dad killed it.

More of this drama took place a few months ago. I was getting ready to take a shower and a big, black one crawled out of the drain before I even had a chance to get in. No one else was home, so there I stood, with a hairbrush in hand and wrapped in a towel, eyeing the spider and taunting it with my weapon. But I couldn't even bring myself to kill it. I didn't want to leave the room for fear it would crawl out of the tub unseen and haunt me in some other portion of the house. So there I stood, trapped in the bathroom and owned by a spider the size of a quarter. This is tragic, I know.

Last night, while in bed, I felt the sensation of a bug on my leg. I flew out of bed, whipped the covers back, and searched my sheets. Nothing. A corner of my mind became a bit seized with the thought of crawling back into bed with a spider, and I was tempted to camp out with a fly swatter in the middle of the floor instead. But then a little thought intervened.

I've been reading the book When People Are Big and God is Small by Edward Welch. The section that popped into my head was from Chapter 3:

"What is the result of this people-idolatry? As in all idolatry, the idol we choose to worship soon owns us. The object we fear overcomes us. Although insignificant in itself, the idol becomes huge and rules us. It tells us how to think, what to feel, and how to act."

I realized right then that while I wasn't idolizing spiders, I was allowing the fear of them to control me. The realization actually made me a little angry at myself for being so stupid, so I yanked off the light and climbed back into bed in a huff. "How silly you are Lauren," I thought.

I felt quite empowered and liberated actually. And I think that I am the better now for it - both people-wise and spider-wise. It occurred to me that there's a whole new realm of things you can do if you're fearing only God instead of man and the dark. I hope that if nothing else, my transparency will help you feel like you're not the only one.

take it easy.

I've been feeling a little under the weather lately, and I can't even tell you how wonderful it has been to just sleep and sleep and sleep. Really, I've been in bed about 50% of my normal awake time. Then I saw this post that that pretty Shasta girl put up and I had to share this nook picture with you too. I could just stay here forever I think.

false coloring.

Ah Streams in the Desert never disappoints. Do read it:  

"This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest; and this is the refreshing." (Isa. 28:12)

Why dost thou worry thyself? What use can thy fretting serve? Thou art on board a vessel which thou couldst not steer even if the great Captain put thee at the helm, of which thou couldst not so much as reef a sail, yet thou worriest as if thou wert captain and helmsman. Oh, be quiet; God is Master!

Dost thou think that all this din and hurly-burly that is abroad betokens that God has left His throne?

No, man, His coursers rush furiously on, and His chariot is the storm; but there is a bit between their jaws, and He holds the reins, and guides them as He wills! Jehovah is Master yet; believe it; peace be unto thee! be not afraid - C.H. Spurgeon

"Tonight, my soul, be still and sleep;
The storms are raging on God's deep -
God's deep, not thine; be still and sleep.

Tonight, my soul, be still and sleep;
God's hands shall still the temter's sweep -
God's hands, not thine; be still and sleep.

Tonight, my soul, be still and sleep;
God's love is strong while night hours creep -
God's love, not thine; be still and sleep.

Tonight, my soul, be still and sleep;
God's heaven will comfort those who weep -
God's heaven, not thine; be still and sleep." 

I entreat you, give no place to despondency. This is a dangerous temptation - a refined, not a gross temptation of the adversary. Melancholy contracts and withers the heart, and renders it unfit to receive the impressions of grace. It magnifies and gives a false coloring to objects, and thus renders your burdens too heavy to bear. God's designs regarding you, and His methods of bringing about these designs, are infinitely wise. - Madame Guyon

miscalculated.

But I see the door
and knew the wall, and wanted the wood
and would get there if I could
with my feet and hands and mind.
Robert Creeley

prime.

There was a thunderstorm on tuesday night. The first of the summer. My family always gathers in the living room to watch the lightning out the big picture window and the big trees in the field outside rush back and forth...always an event in this household.

But right now its clear out, and I can hear the sprinkler outside my open window, slowly and comfortingly ticking around. Mom's cooking dinner in the kitchen: wild rice soup with fresh baked bread to be exact. It's sort of twilight out...still a blue sky, but creeping with pink and a darker color stretching toward the far corner of my window. I can see a few stars. I'm perfectly comfortable, under my duvet and propped up with two white pillows. I have a jar of tea next to me, and the fan is whirring loudly. It's warm. I think I could fall asleep in four seconds if I let myself.

The last five days have been solely filled with:

reading (I think I've been to the library about four times now, I just can't get enough). running around colby lake with jojo and amy. working on the quilt that grandma and i started last summer. exploring linden hills and the little bread shop with my mom. naps on the couch in the addition with the sun in patches on the carpet. hikes in afton state park (one of mom's belated mother's day presents). work at gap and the alpha center (those hours are indispensable). the grand ole creamery and walks down summit ave. with the fam. lolling around in the sun (accompanied by the current/classical MPR and spf 15 of course). lots and lots of unpacking. but it's been good...i like sorting myself out in that way, both metaphorically and physically.

Yesterday, Ames and I went to Trader Joes and picked up some dried apricots, chevre with honey fresh goat cheese, and iced mint green tea: we could not have been happier. Also, I found a little sock monkey key chain for my keys at a little shop down by Lake of the Isles, and he is named Clive (this is monumental because I've been searching for one of these for quite a while now).

It's been the best of summer days, really.

1.

The shingles are flying off the roofin one line like a road you have to walk. Please don’t scratch your hair until that section of your mind underneath disappears. Stop pouring your tea into air vents and the potholes in the street. You have a jar of cold water and a bag full of cranberries, exactly twenty-one. I’ve tied names like Astrid and Ingrid with twine to my steering wheel; and really, there’s only a year and a thousand miles between all our wooden chairs and yours. I wouldn’t worry.

finally rest.

As soon as we set up camp on Friday night, it rained. It was so peaceful, lying amidst fifteen blankets and pillows while listening to the rain. It only lasted about an hour, and then we all took off for the riverbank. We may or may not have ran through the mud and rapelled the cliff faces while the after-rain fog rolled in. You'll have to decide. But if we didn't, that would be a pretty glorious thing to do. 

corner of lincoln.

Before my grandpa died, he used to always tell my mom, in great detail, about his mall walks. It's actually quite a spectacle if you go on a Saturday morning. Elderly men and women of all speeds and sizes cruise around the outer perimeter of the mall as a source of exercise and often do so simply to escape the feelings of loneliness that can commonly plague them.  My grandpa would explain to my mother how, as he walked, people would hardly look at him. Especially the younger people. He explained how he felt invisible. Like he had passed through time, and now no one cared. Only the mannequins in the store windows really saw him. He was just a shadow moving along the inner walls.

On the corner of Lincoln and Lydia, adjacent to our dorm building, is a retirement home for the elderly. Every now and then, I see one particular older man haltingly push his walker toward that corner and take a seat on the small shelf hooked to the front of his apparatus. I've seen him sitting there for hours at a time before. I'll drive to class and then drive back after, and he'll still be there. He sits kind of crouched down, elbows resting on the arms of his walker and his wrinkled hands clasped in front. His beige golf cap is always a bit tipped down over an incredibly creased face, and his neck seems to be sinking into the rest of his body.

I wonder what he thinks about - watching the traffic zoom by and observing a barrage of college students tromp across the crosswalk everyday. I wonder if it makes him remember when he was young. I wonder if he's lonely. Or if he has a family who visits him. Or if he went to war when he was twenty-three or fell in love at a gas station. I wonder if he is forgotten. Maybe he counts his cheerios out everyday, exactly nineteen. Maybe he lives for TV dinners and the six o'clock news and his walks to the corner. I wonder if he feels like a shadow.

As I pulled up to the stop sign, before I even knew what I was doing, I found myself waving energetically and smiling at him. Almost immediately, a smile spread to his furrowed face, and he haltingly pulled a shaking hand out of his teal windbreaker and raised it to wave back. I saw him in my rearview mirror as I drove away, still grinning and holding his quivering hand in the air.

It's curious that Roseville would place a retirement home on one side of the street and a college dorm on the other. Like two bookends. We prologue and they epilogue. The rest in between is still missing.

Well, I hope he knows that he was recognized today, that he wasn't overlooked or disregarded. I can't stop thinking about him.

northward.

All my life, I have grown up camping. I think it's actually in my genetics. For my parent's honeymoon, they went camping in Grand Teton and Yellowstone national park - for like a week. That's how much they love it. The next two years in a row they backpacked in the Rockies at up to 14,000 feet. They've been all over the States and Canada, in every condition, and have just three years ago graduated from tenting to a camper (it was a difficult, but necessary decision). They have such a love for the wild and the north and adventure - I can't help but feel it's in my blood.

My first encounter camping was at the tender age of four, and I still can remember bunching my shorts up, stepping out onto the rocks at the north shore of Lake Superior in northern MN and trying not to slip off into the water. I remember sitting in the middle of the canoe with my dog when I was ten as my parents paddled on either side and watching Addie jump out into the river after a squirrel she saw on shore (Don't worry, my dad caught her leash before she permanently floated away). We would canoe through passages of water chock full of waterlilies and surrounded on all sides by tall pine trees. I remember feeling like it was a complete other world, so different from my suburban existence back home.  

Mornings were always coffee and maple cinnamon oatmeal, and I always took great satisfaction in the fact that I could just throw my bowl and spoon into the fire after I finished eating and watch the paper shrivel to nothingness in the heat. No garbage takeout necessary. Showering was usually very low key and occasionally consisted of washing in mildly chilly lakes with biodegradable soap and shampoo. If you've never experienced getting clean in the middle of the wilderness, please put it on your bucket list. I remember riding our bikes everywhere. During the day, we would often go biking on the dirt roads by the fields or to go get ice cream in town where we would usually end up perusing the little shops on the main street for hours. In the evening, we would go up to the main lodge and buy ice and firewood for dinner-making...after a full day outdoors, fire-roasted food always tasted twice as delicious to my tuckered out, sun-baked self. I remember being entirely encased from head to toe in my sleeping bag on chilly nights, covered in plaid blankets and completely relaxed as crickets chirped next to our teal, nylon tent.

I really have countless memories of sitting at picnic tables in the woods, falling asleep to loons, and simply being in the middle of no where. My heart is scattered across each of these places, each mountain, dock, forest, and secret place we children explored. These are places where my family experienced every kind of emotion, every type of conversation. It is so much a part of how I grew up that I really can't separate it from who I am. They've constituted my summers for as long as I can remember.

Anyways, all of this preface is to help express how excited I am for this weekend and how much I look forward to experiencing the north in this way with eight of the dearest of friends.

http://mp3lands.com/flash/new/player.swf

$30 wiser.

After watching a poignant recording of a conference detailing how to properly and shrewdly handle money, I have decided that I have not been wise in how I've been handling my money, and I want to make a great effort to change these habits. This will done by:
1) Keeping a check register. Everything I buy with my Visa will be written down.
2) Only one coffee a week. Not only is a constant consumption of
    caffeine unhealthy, but $2 every other day adds up quickly.
    That's like $15-$30 a month...just on coffee.

If you see me around, feel free to hold me accountable to this challenge. I am determined.

inkstone came out today.

 

I haven't been writing much of my own stuff as of late, but I keep coming across all of these beautiful pieces from others. My brain has just been so empty lately; maybe I'm stocking up, and one day all the pent up deliberations will unstack themselves and pour out into blogpost after blogpost. Please be patient with my uncreative absence.

Yet another feature from one of my favorite poets: my dear friend Brianna Tongen.

Two Mornings

Morning #1 I wake and it is before dawn or deep winter. The coffee-timer blinks at 6:12am. Card table, calendar, woolly gray sweater. If I am alone in this apartment, then I am alone on this earth. I want to ask you if we dreamed of each other last night. Lightly gliding the night bridge of continents. Leaving the stairwell, it is still Minnesota. Christ, no one wants this to work more than me.

This day in German is called geschichte.  in Hebrew, tanakh. or at least the part with the Tower of Babel. The land splits apart as their voices.

Morning #2 I wake and it is still winter. I was dreaming of a toddler. Her older siblings stuck a porcupine's quill into her ear, daring her to keep it there for one minute. They forgot about it, even though she cried. In my dream, she died on the bench of a diner. Forty minutes later. Do you ever shake your head to knock things out? like a loose bolt in the body of a music box? I have poured the Promised Land into my coffee This morning, I say a prayer of no toddlers dying ever. Every day, the winter gets married. And she slopes her bridal gown over my retaining wall. It is happening as I am writing it down.

The freezing telephone poles will be the first to tell you how it feels to die and stand upright forever.

Do you ever shake your head to knock things out and realize you have only knocked them deeper?

the camera.

by Anis Mojgani

The camera could erase all memories the people in front of it shared of one another. The young man in the dark uniform smiled at the young girl beside him.

“Now I won’t have to remember the time we were in the car and I told you I still loved you and you sighed in exasperation. And you wont have to think of the ones before you or of the pictures you found. And we can just ride bicycles to the park. Wipe the crumbs off each others cheeks and lean upon each other without worry of sleep or love or leaving.”

She smiled and nodded, touched his arm.
 The photographer started reading a magazine. The girl suddenly looked perplexed.

“But remember when you taught me to whistle? And the time you came home to your new house and I had already decorated it for you? The basket of stones, the hanging metal airplane? The wooden cowboy painting? Remember when you came to Christmas at my mother’s and while she and my aunt slept down the hall you kissed me for the first time in front of the TV? How we started talking out in the car in that empty bus station parking lot?”

The photographer looked up from his article, "I remember. But remember when you left my place only to sit on the curb around the corner bawling? Remember the ache, the empty?”
“Yes,” she said softly.
He pulled his ear. “Remember the birthday party you threw me? And how you were the one girl that finally got me on a roller coaster?” She laughed. Then stopped.

“Remember when you came over only to end up fighting with one another and afterward we lay next to one another all night like yardsticks and decided to stop seeing each other?”

“Yes but remember how we both felt like such crap the next day over how unhappy we suddenly were that we decided that was silly and got back together?” She paused. “Remember Hawaii?” He smiled. And looked up. She brushed something from his brow. The sun crept through the window. The photographer decided to put some coffee on.

“The winter we first met was so cold. I had no heat, hardly any furniture. You sat next to me on that old, fold-out couch, under blankets you gave to me.” He paused. And continued.
“We would sit there, you would touch my arm, carefully. You thought I was sleeping. I never was. I was always waiting for it to happen. I dont want to forget that.”

He didn't want to cry in front of her, so he put his chin down. She put her arm around him and said, “Rub my hands. Pretend we are sitting on that curb right now, and I can’t get warm. You remember how to do that right?”

He nodded and pulled her close in the photo studio. She sighed. While the two of them sat there, the photographer went to get some milk. The man moved his fingers over the back of the girl's hand, moving them across it like drunken dragonflies, slow dancing with the stillness. The girl curled against him, head to neck, like a dream and a child, and fell asleep like that.

The photographer returned, took a sip from his cup, and turned the page. This always happened.

[edited]

raison d'être.

"You know what's a really pretty expression?" he said, "'Raison d'être. It means reason for being. Isn't that great? God es mi raison d'être."

"That is beautiful. Who told you that?"

"I read it in a book. A little boy says it about the things that he loves."

"How wonderful," I answered.

"Yeah. that's all. I just wanted to share that with you."

There were streetlights in the pond last night.

so was this.

I got the smoked ham for lunch todaywhich I would never normally do, and bent my fork trying to cut it. But it was good. I had to make a really big decision today so I went into a little room where they store tables and chairs, and prayed. Then I received peace. I set two alarms this morning for 6, slept straight through both of them, and woke up on my own at about 7. Wasn't even late. Sometimes I think I'm a little crazy with things. Look at me, making a pattern here as I write my doings. Oh well, its satisfying my want for order. Apparently, dark chocolate has moved up, the food pyramid fully supports it and claims it has as many antioxidants as dark vegetables. I can't lie, I'm extremely pleased with this news. Dark chocolate is probably close to my favorite food. Just thought I'd take more lines to gush about that.

and the conclusion of the trio.

After an entire week consumed with Physiological Psychology, I must just say that I am now....free. It was a dramatic and sluggish and somewhat unsatisfying last few days.